Long Road Home
by VacuumTan
Summary: Home is lonely, so Jun doesn't go yet. Tatsuya stays with him.
1. Chapter 1

**a/n: this is a series of (sorta) individual bits of tatsujun fluff and angst set during innocent sin; most chapters correspond with one dungeon and one ward of sumaru.**

 **crosspost from ao3.**

* * *

Maya shoots the both of them a sympathetic smile, just a tad too tired around the edges. "Tatsuya-kun, why don't you see Jun-kun home?" she asks, voice still bright, and pats their shoulders one last time before taking off for the day, taking the shrine's stairs two at a time. Tatsuya sighs.

"You needn't," Jun says shakily, then, thin lips yet searching for a shape to settle into. "Or rather," he concedes, and ultimately chooses to suck his already chapped bottom lip between his teeth to gnaw on, "I don't want you to feel like you have any obligations towards me. I'll be fine."

And it's unfair- truly, it is- but Tatsuya can't help but doubt that he'll be _just_ fine. It's in the way Jun is digging the frayed crescents of his bitten nails into his palm; in the way his thin shoulders are so tense, his muscles tremble under the strain; it's in his swollen eyes and his teeth that keep digging and digging into his lip, digging further and further until they draw blood, and then further and deeper still, always digging and—

It's not for a lack of sympathy that words refuse to come; things are painfully difficult, because of course they are, and not sparing Jun any kind thoughts would be way easier, but— Tatsuya frowns and studies his shoes. He regrets not being more eloquent; conversation has always been hard for one Suou Tatsuya. But with the fight still trembling in his muscles and the day's events bearing down on him just as heavily as a decade's worth of misplaced sentimentalities and forgetfulness that now burns like inches of steel lodged below his shoulder blade— his throat constricts like an erratic pulse.

Although lightheaded and if only by habit, he fumbles for the lighter inside his pocket. The scratched-up metal against his palm and the familiar motions of snapping the cap, over and over, soothe his nerves, if only a bit. It lets him meditate, in a way- lets him choose his words carefully while grounding him enough not to let his thoughts grow wild and frenetic.

"Let's go," he chooses, mumbled under his breath, as though he were a shy eight-year-old pulling his friend with him when no one would come fetch him for the third time that week to invite him into his own dysfunctional haven of a home life.

Jun stares at him, then, so painfully tired. His face is pale where it isn't bruised or dirty, the split in his chapped bottom lip mirroring the worn and torn seams of his uniform. "I don't…" he starts, weary and uncertain, and his hands curl into fists, seeking to grasp nothing at all. "I don't want to, yet."

And Tatsuya can't help but think of the crumpled form of a woman on the floor, of the single, rueful glance Jun cast in her direction as he followed the rest of them and ran, of all the things he maybe wanted to say- wants to say- but couldn't and can't and never will. Home, to Jun, will never be more than empty rooms and dead silence- cold retribution for crimes committed out of loneliness and sadness and innocent goodwill.

"Then I'll stay with you," Tatsuya informs Jun- his friend; perhaps even _best_ friend, somewhere deep down, in some terribly introspective crevice that can still childishly forgive and forget and isn't yet too bitter to move on- because he looks haunted, still, by the past day and the weeks and months before that.

And maybe it's that haunted tiredness and undying loneliness that makes Jun give in with a sigh and little protest. "Thank you," he replies, lip twitching as if to add some more. He thinks better of it, though, and instead walks the few metres to the seemingly endless flight of stairs attaching the shrine, almost surreally frozen in time, to the rest of the city.

"Once we go down there," Jun starts, loud into the distance, yet quiet on the wind, "everything will be _real_." His thin shoulders are tense and squared; Tatsuya can only stand and watch his back as he regards the cityscape- anything beyond that feels invasive, feels beyond his control, feels frightening.

The sun begins to set to their right, hazy reds and oranges softening edges of everything in sight. Even Jun's frayed, almost threadbare nerves unravel in it, until his tense posture eventually sags, hanging calm and relaxed. Many metres below them, the city slowly begins to glisten and glitter with artificial light- brighter than the old petroleum lamps scattered about shrine grounds.

A few stars attempt to outshine the remainder of day, pitting their feeble white light against purpling pink and faded yellow. Tatsuya moves to stand beside Jun at last, with his distorted, elongated shadow swallowing up Jun's slighter one. "We used to watch the stars from here," he says, and Jun starts upon hearing him speak as if not expecting it.

"Yes," he replies after missing a beat, and Tatsuya can't help but raise a brow. Jun offers an apologetic expression, backlit strangely by the sunset, and needlessly brushes some hair into place. The look in his eye is distant, as if he _still_ wasn't quite there yet. Tatsuya wishes he knew how to reach out to him properly, but an appropriate action won't come to mind, and words are even more elusive.

He's angry in a way he can't understand—in a way he frankly doesn't _want_ to understand, and he is all the more sympathetic for it. He toys with the lighter in his pocket as if it could offer him advice. Its surface is scratched up and worn, but it still shines. It's been tossed around and refilled countless times, but it still works. A little finicky, but fine. Tatsuya sighs, because the analogy is not lost on him.

Night encroaches on them slowly, like giant, purple claws capturing Xibalba in their grasp. The winds are picking up, turning chillier by the second. Jun doesn't seem to notice, his gaze long since back on the city before them, not seeing a thing.

"I'm sorry," he whispers eventually, just before the sky turns pitch dark, and Tatsuya looks up to find Jun's eyes on him. The old lanterns on the shrinegrounds flicker. Shadows pass across Jun's face, shuddering and casting his face in darkness.

Tatsuya's stomach drops, plummeting to the surface of the forgotten ground kilometres below, and he feels almost dizzy with it. It's agonising—the longing to reach out and offer comfort to someone who used to be close—and still can and would and should be close—and the uneasiness and uncertainty keeping him from doing so. There's nothing he can do, and even less he can _say_ , but idle silence is so much crueller; even Tatsuya knows as much.

"You should stop worrying for today," he offers. It's not an olive branch, let alone acceptance, but it's a start, weak as it might be. It's a stalemate, the beginning of reconciliation, peace at least offered to a warring mind. And when Jun shoots him a wretched little smile in reply, it almost seems like he understands his efforts. It's gratifying, and Tatsuya feels something unravel within himself.

"Do you want to get going?" he asks, indicating towards the city, the world and everything beyond that.

And Jun inhales, squares his shoulders and nods.

"Yes."


	2. Chapter 2

The streets in Yumezaki are always livelier than Rengedai's middle-class neighbourhoods, brimming with people instead of a perpetual sense of ennui. Even (or maybe especially) at night, it's loud and bright and excessively crowded, seemingly unfazed by everything and anything.

"It's alright, though," Jun says, the planes of his face illuminated by the harsh neon lighting of some advertisement or another, "because you won't get lost in your own head."

And, well, that's a fair point.

"Should we go somewhere?" Tatsuya asks, then, glancing down at Jun by his side, both frozen still amidst the evening crowd. Jun blinks owlishly, as though taken aback by the question.

People keep moving past them, uncaring and unbothered, swallowing up the lights' pinks and greens and yellows, and only ever casting shadows in their wake. Tatsuya wonders if he broke something- some unspoken promise, some agreement or another, Jun _himself_ \- but then their little bubble of unmoving time and space bursts and Jun smiles.

"Let's keep walking around instead, then," he replies, eyes shining brighter under garish colours, before taking the lead through throngs of people once again. Amidst the noise, the people and the artificial lights, it's almost easy to tune out shadowy silhouettes at the edges of their vision; to pretend that the comparatively few night-owls are due to something out of their control. It's almost easy, so Tatsuya focuses on the back of Jun's head as he moves on, determined and aimless, and lets himself get carried away.

They pass by clubs and bars and whatnot and never spare them a glace. Every corner plays different songs- mismatched rhythms of contradicting hard-bass, some foreign lyrics no one bothers to decipher- it's all some white and noisy cacophony that heralds nothing but a headache. But then, at some point, Jun starts talking: aimless, casual things, every now and then broken by a fleeting thought or a deeply philosophical tangent. His words are muffled and muted and probably unimportant, yet they ring so clear above clumsy loudness.

Tatsuya can't offer the same kind of conversation, but if Jun begrudges him for it, he hides it well, somewhere behind a small, easy smile, and a chilly hand loosely holding onto the sleeve of Tatsuya's blazer.

As the night wears on and their tattered school uniforms start to stick out like a pair of sore thumbs- Tatsuya's Seven's ensemble more so than Jun's high-collared stigma of delinquency- they opt for quieter places, eventually. They begin roaming smaller streets- more remote, less busy- and bright neon is replaced with the clinical white of street lights.

It's well into the early hours of the morning when Jun's anxious energy finally fizzles out. "We probably won't be getting enough sleep now," he says airily, not a hint of regret in his voice. If anything, he sounds almost proud, standing in the shade of the early morning hours with exhaustion on his face and life in his eyes.

And Tatsuya wonders- he wonders what Jun's life had been like, all these years, in the gaps between fractured memories and their hazy present. A lonely time, certainly, but without a doubt also brimming with internalised emotion; overflowing, on occasion, and then spilling with all the violence of a torrential downpour.

It's nothing but that very violence that has led them here, into this moment edging towards dawn, and yet, amidst the stale breeze filling the night and the dull noises of a town finally, finally going to sleep, it's peaceful. So, perhaps that mundane, exhausted peace is exactly it, Tatsuya muses- perhaps it's what Jun needs, this inconsequential space of forgiveness, this mindless waste of time that would be better spent preparing for the next day.

A long suffering sigh rips Tatsuya away from his musings and when he looks at Jun, he's smiling with a fond, bemused curl of his lips. It feels like the nonverbal version of 'penny for your thoughts,' Tatsuya feels, but, if only to save himself the embarrassment, he pretends not to get the hint.

"You must be tired," Jun says, softly, then, and curls his chilly fingers over Tatsuya's warm ones way too casually. "Sorry for keeping you." He closes his eyes, brows furrowing as though he were in pain, before forcing a hollow little smile. "I'll be fine getting home, so I'll see you tomorrow," he assures, voice wavering along with the tremors of his cold, cold hands.

Tatsuya doesn't believe him, of course, so he carefully and ever so bashfully disentangles his fingers from Jun's, sighing. "No," he exhales softly, in the feeblest fashion of expressing disagreement, "I'll see you home."


	3. Chapter 3

The parking lot in front of the nearest Satomi Tadashi looks surreal with pale sunset pouring into every crack and crevice of the worn concrete. Tatsuya watches twilight move his own shadow at snail's pace while ripping weeds from where they grow out of the curb. Jun returns from the vending machine across the street with two cans of soda, one in each hand.

"I got us grape and lemon," he announces, holding them out for Tatsuya to take his pick. Wordlessly, he takes the lemon one (if only because he suspects Jun to be more of a grape person) and cracks it open.

Jun settles down beside him, legs folded properly where Tatsuya's longer ones sprawl. "Sorry for keeping you yet again," he says, staring at his still unopened can as if it held all the answers in the universe, "or rather, thank you for staying." He punctuates this with a guarded smile, still avoiding eye contact.

Tatsuya just hums, taking a sip from his soda. It's surprisingly sour and excessively carbonated, he finds, and yet, the taste is almost nostalgic. Maybe it's the fading summer air, the fizzy drink or just having Jun next to him, but he can't help but think back to late summer days, full of sunshine and scraped knees and the taste of ramune and uninhibited laughter; and it's kind of bizarre how it feels natural to remember them, now, after all that had been forgotten for the sake of forgetting has returned to him.

These memories have been Jun's alone to recall for years, even if they were warped into much ghastlier versions of themselves; and, Tatsuya supposes, they must have been tormentors in their own right, leaving a single boy to suffer in loneliness while slowly but surely driving him to the brink of insanity.

And yet, he's here, watching the faded summer of his seventeenth year fizzle out sweetly like bubbles in lemon soda.

"I'm glad for Eikichi," Jun says right into the pensive silence between them, running the bitten stubs he has for nails along his can's rim. His expression is unreadable, trained into carefully practised neutrality. Tatsuya struggles to tell what he wants. "How things worked out for him," he adds.

Perhaps there's method to this. Perhaps Jun is hinting at something so subtly that Tatsuya's ever lethargic mind has trouble figuring it out. "Sure," he therefore replies, vague as anything, and shrugs.

Jun licks his lips. Inhales, then hesitates; reconsiders, maybe. "Do you believe in true love?" he asks, staring at the still unopened lid of his drink. He doesn't ask about fate or destiny, about soulmates or red strings or any other pre-established storyline that would lead to the same conclusion twenty times over. It's voluntary and human and it makes so much sense for Jun to separate these concepts and yet, Tatsuya struggles to unlink the two notions.

He worries his lip and thinks for an instant. Ultimately, he settles for, "I want to." Because, truly, he does. How he feels for all of them—for Maya and for Lisa and Eikichi, and also Jun himself, is something so honest and fierce—if it isn't _true_ and if it isn't _love_ , he could spend a lifetime trying to name it and still come out none the wiser. And having faith in that much almost doesn't seem foolish at all.

His reply seems to puzzle Jun, however, if only because of how noncommittal it is. He stares at him for an eternity before dropping his eyes back to the curb almost shyly, a taut smile pulling at the edges of his mouth. "I suppose that answer suits you," he replies, flashing teeth. "You've always cared, deep down."

Jun sounds bitter as he says it, resentful in a way that is hard to pinpoint. Tatsuya stalls by taking a long swig of his soda, praying that the tension will sizzle out by the time he swallows. "You're the same in that regard, though," he says as he sets the can down, tinplate clanking on concrete. Next to him, Jun jolts as if the sound startled him, but Tatsuya resolutely studies the sunlit outline of his shoes. "You just care about others too much," he continues, "but it doesn't always work out. I get it."

The noise Jun makes at that is an ugly thing, almost a wail. His hands shoot out to grip Tatsuya's bicep with enough force to accidentally bruise, and he looks like he so desperately, _desperately_ wants to say something. But all he does is to stare at Tatsuya with his russet eyes wide, unseeing and focussed on him alone. Sunset scatters in his irises and sets off supernovas inside the vast microcosm that is Jun's head that Tatsuya has no means of tapping into.

"Am I wrong?" he asks, his voice coming out so soft and apologetic, it barely sounds like his at all. Jun squeezes his eyes shut and slowly shakes his head. Accepting Tatsuya's words seems to pain him; he never seems to want sympathy or understanding. Eventually, though, his grip relaxes and he deflates.

They sit in silence for a while after that. It's so charged that Tatsuya can almost feel the air crackling between them and yet, he has no idea what to say. It's frightening, having to talk again after that. He's always walking on eggshells with Jun, and it's absolutely, frustratingly unnecessary. His words are never good enough, even if his heart bleeds for his friend more and more each day.

The quiet can't carry the weight of his emotions any better than his words can. Though so deeply shaken, it's Jun who has to step forward and take the initiative again and he inhales sharply before speaking. "Could you ever have done the things that I have?" he asks, not accusatory but ever melancholy.

Tatsuya ponders that question whilst staring down the dirty hems of his slacks. "Maybe not," he replies, "but maybe something similar."

Carefully, he seeks Jun's eyes, then, praying that a look is enough to convey everything his mouth can't. Jun's expression slowly softens until he has to look away. He finally cracks his soda can open after tapping the lid exactly three times. "That's not reassuring at all," he says dryly, framed like a joke, and tentatively tastes his drink.

His entire face scrunches up. Tatsuya almost smiles.

Jun gives the can a disapproving look before setting it down. He straightens his posture. A car drives by, concrete crunching under broad tires. "I don't think I'll ever get that again," declares Jun, daintily dabbing at his lips with sore fingertips.

Tatsuya picks up the grape soda to taste it. Surprisingly, it's almost flat and doesn't taste like grape at all. Jun stares at him expectantly—mostly at the place where his breaths fog up chilled tinplate—and Tatsuya is suddenly acutely aware of the phantom warmth of another pair of lips lingering on the cold metal.

As he removes it from his mouth, he is careful not to let that particular sentiment show on his face, however. Instead, he confidently looks Jun in the eye and raises the can a bit. "If you don't like something, you don't have to hold onto it," he states, not subtle in his clumsy analogy. He then tilts the can until grape soda comes spilling out, wetting the curb with an initial splash.

Jun stares at him with his jaw just a bit slack for a moment. Then, he blinks, before graceless laughter comes tumbling from his lips, still bubbly after the spilt drink has fizzled out completely. Tatsuya flushes up to his ears, but refuses to do anything but toss the empty can as far as his sore muscles allow.

And, well—Jun smiles, unguarded for a change, all the way home.


	4. Chapter 4

They rest on a flight of stairs, in some back alley wedged between Hirasaka's tall buildings. The walls are littered with graffiti and slurs, maybe the unofficial collaborative art-project of a few Kasu High students, and the floor remotely reeks of piss.

Jun's prim posture doesn't fit into the scene- not quite, not really- but, Tatsuya supposes, he might just be a tad tense, anyways. As though reading his thoughts, Jun averts his eyes to the floor with a bashful flutter of his lashes. "I…" he begins, and he struggles to find anything at all to say. His cheeks flush a pretty pink. "I really wonder what you were thinking, back at the temple."

He says it without giving away his thoughts on the matter; on having Lisa ever so unabashedly declare her honest feelings for Tatsuya; on having Tatsuya turn her down with an even bolder declaration of 'I'm only interested in Jun', unmistakable in meaning; on playing it off and keeping it in mind for whenever there's time.

And well, they _have_ a little time now.

Tatsuya presses his lips together tightly. "She deserved a truthful answer," he mumbles, heat rising to his ears and up his neck, somewhere between embarrassed and five minutes shy of overheating. Jun but hums thoughtfully in reply, crossing his ankles where his rolled-up slacks give way to bare skin.

"So you were serious," he confirms, eyes a bit misty as he studies the different scrawls across the walls. The tips of his ears look redder than usual when he tucks some hair behind his right one, pursing his lips while obviously and desperately feigning interest in everything but Tatsuya.

His fumbling is surprising, to some extent; Jun is earnest and honest in everything he does, losing neither his wits nor his tongue, usually, even on the worst of days. But somehow—somehow, bumbling, awkward Tatsuya, who so frequently gets lost in his own head and speaks with his fists, who can't remember the meanings of flowers or long passages of French poetry—somehow, that ill-spoken, dense Tatsuya has articulate, dignified Jun at a loss for words.

So it takes a while. They're really just an awkward silence of ineloquent mouths, of shifting feet and fidgeting anxiety, as though one sentence lacking contemplation could make or break everything and nothing, all at once.

(It couldn't. Not even the end of the world could.)

Jun is the first to speak again, because he seems to know how and when and where to meet Tatsuya, not quite in the middle- rather, after two thirds of the way- but he seems just fine, walking the extra mile.

"Are you sure about this?" he asks, a bit soft and with a subtle crack to his voice. He licks his lips as though they were dry, and chances what feels like a first peek in ages at Tatsuya, ever so shyly. "You have every right in the world to hate me." _For all I've done_ , though that remains unspoken.

And perhaps, Tatsuya supposes, ultimately, he _does_ have the right to hate him; to begrudge him for all the suffering he's caused and to loathe him for instilling compassion in all of them, regardless. Yes, he could blame him and hate him; but it's not what he wants to do, let alone what he is able to do.

"I couldn't," he therefore states, blunt and honest. Jun seems doubtful still, expression holding an edge of scepticism that has nothing to do with distrust and everything to do with self-hatred. "Really," Tatsuya presses, and he wonders if it would be out of line to reach out and hold Jun's hand right then, squeeze it and lace their fingers together in an attempt to anchor both of them in the moment.

But before he can bring himself to act on the impulse, Jun stands up, turning around to offer Tatsuya his hand in a completely different context. "I want to believe you," he states, pulling Tatsuya to his feet, "more than anything. But I also want you to consider your feelings on the matter once more."

The smile that follows is sad and weak and just a bit lopsided, with one cheek still holding a faint, yellowing bruise from that time when a healing spell had been neither fast nor strong enough. "It's been ten years," he goes on, looking down at their still clasped hands, "so think it through."

Deep inside, Tatsuya knows how pointless it is. Like the words engraved in his lighter, Jun's _everything_ is, for better or for worse, carved deeply into Tatsuya's very being. They're two awkward halves of a pitiful whole; the time to keep apart has ended along with the world's status quo.

But Jun doesn't ask for any of those thoughts. He only asks for Tatsuya to humour him on this- to stand by his principles tomorrow too.

"Alright," Tatsuya agrees eventually. Jun gives him a pretty smile and squeezes his hand before letting go at last. Tatsuya feels a small smile tugging at the corners of his own mouth.

"I'll take you home."


	5. Chapter 5

The air in Kounan once tasted of sea-salt and gasoline while the starry skies were drowned out by the port's lights at night. The scent of the sea is gone, now, and the stars are so close that no lantern could ever dream to outshine them. The nightly winds are only harsh updrafts anymore, nothing like a gentle sea-breeze. There are a lot of has-beens around the city, these days.

Tatsuya's grip on Jun's hand is vice-like, but he can't bring himself to care. Jun doesn't protest, anyways, and looks at him with a kind of sad understanding. It only serves to aggravate Tatsuya further, which honestly frightens him.

Whilst he could offer silent support and acceptance in the aftermath of his friends' Shadows, nothing prepared him for having to deal with it himself. Because feigning indifference had been easy, those other times, as it had been all his life; but when his flimsy guise of ambition had been called out for being just that and when he'd faltered for that damn second—when his stupid, stupid ineloquent tongue had refused to move for an instant too long and he'd seen Jun's heart break then and there, and the words still didn't come just yet—

He inhales sharply and releases Jun's hand at last. They're at the beach; Tatsuya dragged Jun all the way here, through the entire ward, and he's just so, so tired. He drags his hands down his face and inhales the smell of steel and filth and flower stems. He feels like he should be crying, as if tears could release the cocktail of ugly emotion inside of him. But his eyes remain regretfully dry, no matter how hard he presses the heels of his palms into them.

And then, all of a sudden, there's a tentative, gentle hand on his shoulder, and Tatsuya remembers that he isn't alone. Whether or not that is a good thing, he can't tell, and merely thinking so is terribly unfair.

So he pulls himself together for as long as he can, lowers his hands, and turns towards Jun. The other boy stares at him, incredibly sad and so, so caring. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asks, the phantom sound of an entire ocean swallowing up his words.

Tatsuya wants to shake his head no, to keep quiet and drink down all the self-loathing and anger. But it's not what he needs to do; instead, he silently nods and weakly tugs at Jun's sleeve until he steps closer.

"I'm so," Tatsuya starts, inhaling and exhaling shakily to steady his tight, foreign-sounding voice, " _so_ mad." Jun hums in affirmation and lightly runs his hands up Tatsuya's arms. They come to rest on his shoulders, then the crook of his neck and finally the angry pulse drumming a furioso beneath his skin. The touch is not unwelcome, Tatsuya finds.

"And why is that?" Jun prods, light and innocent.

"Because I put everyone through that," he replies and his mouth feels like cotton. His fists clench and unclench at his sides, and he'd scream, were his jaw not locked up tight with nerves. But Jun's hands are still on his neck, and they're steady and cold where Tatsuya's blood trembles and boils—they're grounding him with the gentle weight of undeserved affection and kindness. They're to remain there until he's sorted through all of his emotions.

Tatsuya has to choke back a sudden sob. "I'm sorry," he finds himself saying, bringing a palm up to his mouth to keep in all the nauseating feelings begging to spill out. Jun doesn't reply and merely steps closer until his arms can wrap around Tatsuya's shoulders comfortably. His hold his loose enough to break out of, should Tatsuya wish to do so, yet firm enough to offer a sense of security.

"You're fine. It's okay," Jun mutters, so level and patient still and Tatsuya lowers the hand awkwardly wedged between them to tentatively return the embrace. When he does, Jun hums tunelessly and tightens his arms around him; he's warm, despite his eternally chilly fingers, and his thin form is solid and comforting and _real_.

The wind whistles around them, afterimages of endless waves still swaying with it. Tatsuya shivers and angles his body to hide his face in the crook of Jun's neck. They stand like that for a while, just breathing. Gradually, Tatsuya feels the anger drain from his system; all it leaves behind is a hollow in his chest and tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. If Jun notices them eventually soaking into his uniform, he doesn't comment on it.

Instead, he breaks the silence with a question. "Do you really not hate me after all?" he asks with soft, careful sadness. Tatsuya just wishes the other boy wouldn't have to sound like that—that the rage he directs at himself could simply erase Jun's hurt.

Tatsuya swallows, but his voice still ends up thick with tears. "I could never," he replies with a slight sense of déjà vu. "My answer won't change."

Jun's breath hitches at that. His arms tense up and he forcefully hugs Tatsuya as close to himself as possible before pressing his lips against the side of Tatsuya's head. His arms tremble under the strain before they eventually fall to his sides. Tatsuya takes that as his cue to let go of Jun as well, and he stands up straight once more.

They wordlessly stare at each other for a while. The silence isn't charged—there's a lot of things left unsaid, but their meanings are evident. Quietude is a language even Tatsuya is well-versed in.

 _(I'm sorry. Don't worry. Thank you. We'll be fine. Tomorrow will be better. I appreciate you. You're welcome. I'm glad you're here. You mean so much to me—)_

Jun smiles softly.

"Let's go home," he says and extends a hand.


	6. Chapter 6

Daylight fades, and in the blush-red of dusk, the streetlights along their way hum to life. A few streets into a residential area of Rengedai, nightfall becomes a quiet affair. The neighbourhood is a quaint sort of stuffy, with most houses looking like copies of each other. Only a few windows glow orange with artificial light; some homes remain completely dark. Tatsuya pretends to believe that whoever lives there simply isn't back from work yet and keeps on walking.

Next to him, Jun's presence feels familiar and natural, as if it were no different from the warped, elongated shadow sprawling out before his feet. Their steps come mismatched, footfalls filling each other's silences with an offbeat.

"Are you tired?" asks Jun eventually, staring at the ground to keep placing his feet inside the worn outlines of a 'STOP'-marking's final syllable. He glances up at Tatsuya once white paint bleeds into grey pavement. Some ways off, the day's last jingle calling children home rings out.

"Not too much," Tatsuya answers, slowing to a halt. And it's true, in a way, for his fatigue runs much deeper than _tired_ ; it's the kind that goes bone deep, permeating marrow and crawling up his spine, until exhaustion bleeds into his brain to infest his mind. It's high-strung and anxious, and sizzles gently in Tatsuya's veins. It's the restlessness of an impending end.

He wonders if this is what Jun has been feeling like, all this time.

For now, though, Jun just looks at him meaningfully until his steps, too, stop— right in the middle of a crossroads. There's certainly some poetic meaning hidden therein— it's all too tedious to pinpoint. A smile creeps onto Jun's face, crinkling the corners of his eyes. "Then stay with me," he says blithe and breathless, and it's a _demand_. He looks proud of that fact, Tatsuya thinks, and it seems nonsensical and completely sensible all at once.

"Of course," he replies. Jun nods, then meanders on. It takes Tatsuya the whole of two strides to catch up to him.

Darkness tries to settle completely, but much too close to them, in a courtyard much too familiar, a pillar of light stretches into the sky. Wispy tendrils spill out of it like little rivulets bleeding into starlight, and the silvery beam almost rivals sunshine in its brightness—the night is all the more quiet for it.

They carry on walking a few paces further, until Jun eventually halts. His eyes catch on a vacant playground at the outermost margins of a little neighbourhood park, the place completely cast in shadow. Something in his expression lights up at the sight. "Let's go there," he suggests, and Tatsuya doesn't have it in him to deny Jun something quite as simple. So he nods, and, with a grateful, pretty smile the other boy goes ahead.

The playground isn't much, in terms of equipment—a tidy little sandbox, a seesaw, and a set of swings. Tatsuya can't recall having been here before, and yet, a strong feeling of nostalgia grips his heart and ties his stomach in uncomfortable knots. His steps come to a halt where pavement gives way to dry grass as though it were an invisible boundary. All he can do is stare after Jun as he saunters over to the swings, carefully sitting down on one to see if it can support his weight.

Jun waits a few seconds, his feet idly pushing him back and forth, before the scuffing of his heels against the ground stops. "What is it?" he asks mildly, hands tight and tense around the chains by his sides. Tatsuya swallows, wills himself not to shake his head, suppresses the urge to fidget, and takes a heavy step forward.

It feels like everything is off, if only by a margin—not the sense of endless wrongness embodied by Xibalba, nothing quite as global. Rather, it's as if his presence in this particular corner of the world at this exact moment of time is _not right_. Everything feels weightless, tilting on its axis, but only by perhaps two degrees; it's enough to sway Tatsuya's footing, but not to make him lose it; to warp the world while not entirely distorting it.

It's strange and indescribable, and even if there _were_ words for it, Tatsuya would be the last to know them. "It's nothing," he dismisses once he comes to stand just a few steps in front of Jun, who looks about to comment on it before thinking better of it.

"Well, come sit with me," he offers instead, extending a hand to pull Tatsuya closer before guiding him to sit on the swing next to him by the arm. The chains barely creak or jump as his weight settles, and Jun's hand rediscovers his in the empty space between them. Feeling the joints of his fingers—knobby and bony and perfectly ill-fitting where they slot between Tatsuya's own— is grounding.

Jun's pulse thrums a calm rhythm beneath his skin; Tatsuya counts every beat of it like a stage-frightened musician awaiting his cue. "Tomorrow, we're going to set things right," Tatsuya eventually says into the patient silence, and Jun's hand clenches around his.

"Yes," he replies, his tone steady even though his fingers begin to tremble. He grinds his teeth audibly but says no more, staring ahead with a resolute, yet faraway look in his eye. Tatsuya doesn't press him, opting to draw his thumb across the back of Jun's hand in senseless patterns.

After a brief eternity, Jun sighs, then sags. "I won't run away," he declares, and meets Tatsuya's gaze, "I never planned to. It's my obligation to see this through. I can't even begin to atone for all my wrongdoings, but this is something I must do. Something I _want_ to do."

"I know," Tatsuya answers before he can as much as think. Quieter, he adds, "I never doubted that."

Jun smiles, slowly. "I know," he echoes, giving Tatsuya's hand a squeeze. "That's why I chose to stop questioning your feelings." He wets his lips and idly tucks some hair behind his ear with his free hand. The swing creaks as his weight shifts, and when he speaks again, his expression morphs into something more helpless and bashful. "It's not because I'm in no position to, but because I trust you."

There's a sudden heat flaring up inside Tatsuya's chest at the words, and he feels breathless because of it. Jun keeps looking at him, open and imploring, but remains silent beyond his confession. "I…" Tatsuya chokes out, only to find every other word dying on his suddenly leaden tongue.

But Jun is always so patient with him, and his palm is still somewhat cold against his, and heavy and unwaveringly _there_ —

Tatsuya doesn't say anything, in the end. Instead, he raises their intertwined hands up, all the way to his mouth, and presses a light kiss to Jun's knuckles. The chains of their swings rattle, the seats swaying. Jun sighs and his lashes flutter shut.

The sky overhead bleeds silver. A bell, awoken by a clockwork-ghost, tolls in the distance as if announcing the end. Jun's hand clenches around Tatsuya's before he lets go. "We can fix this," he declares and stands, staring down Tatsuya with his thin lips in a severe line. Then, softer, "I'm glad you're by my side for it."

"Me, too," Tatsuya replies.

Jun's smile is fond and tender, and hidden by wandering shadows and scattered starlight. "Tomorrow, then?" he asks, awaiting a promise and confirmation and assurance.

Tatsuya brushes his fingertips over Jun's wrist, looking up at him.

"Tomorrow."


	7. Chapter 7

The house is the same white-noisy brand of quiet as always; from the TV downstairs blares some sports announcer's voice while the tumbler in the bathroom hums a steady monotone. Traffic from downtown sounds louder with rush hour. The neighbours' baby cries.

Tatsuya lies on his side, still in his filthy, sweaty clothes, and carelessly dirties his sheets by doing so. Jun kneels besides his bed, because Tatsuya sprawls in a way that leaves not enough room on his mattress to sit on, and stares at the floor with unseeing, tired eyes.

Their days are growing longer and longer, and yet, sleep doesn't always come easy. Xibalba's core leaves them all weary, but Jun weariest; it's in the unhealthy pallor of his skin, the growing circles under his eyes and the bitten redness of his lips. And yet, Tatsuya is convinced he won't falter- his will is like iron, and his hunger for even the slightest bit of atonement, of _fixing what he broke_ , is titanium.

"I'm always surprised you kept it," Jun speaks, effectively cutting that train of thought short. Tatsuya meets his eye, raising a brow in lieu of actually, _verbally_ asking him to elaborate. Jun shoots him a frail smile and points towards Tatsuya's pants. "The lighter, I mean," he clarifies.

"Oh," Tatsuya says, and pulls the item in question from his pocket. He flicks the cap- two, three times- because it's a habit as natural as breathing at this point. "Of course I did."

The metallic clinking resounds loudly in the otherwise quiet room. Jun watches as the cap snaps open and shut, as if entranced by the motion, before reaching out for it. "May I?" he asks, and Tatsuya has no reason not to place it in his hands.

Jun stares at it reverently as he cradles it in his palm, running his thumb over every scratch and dent marring the once smooth surface from years of being loved so well. It looks smaller in his hands now- not at all how it looked, back when he'd given it to Tatsuya, clasped between his grubby little fingers while glimmering wedding-dress-white- and it serves as nothing but a painful reminder of just how long it has _been_.

When he turns it over, Jun's eyes catch on the words engraved into the lighter's metal. His fingers trace every crudely carved, foreign letter carefully as if trying to commit their exact shape and depth to memory. Tatsuya wonders if Jun even notices that his hands start trembling.

It's too much for him, without a doubt, because Jun's mind must be moving miles a minute, trying to reconcile a bastardised father within faraway memories with his warped current one. So Tatsuya reaches out to him, and it's all impulse and no consideration; he closes his hands over Jun's smaller ones, effectively breaking whatever spell the lighter had cast on him.

"It's gonna be alright," he says, and it comes out awkward where he truly intends for it to be comforting. But Jun seems to get it, always able to look beyond Tatsuya's outward bumbling, and even sends him the ghost of a smile.

"I know," he replies as though he himself believes it, and gingerly returns the lighter to its owner. The watch around his wrist glints when his sleeve slips back and catches Tatsuya's eye as if to remind him of how mutually responsible for each other's suffering they are.

The familiar weight returns into Tatsuya's pocket, and he sits up. Jun stares at him, curling his fingers into the fabric of his pants. "I haven't read Le Petit Prince in ages," he says, changing the subject on a mental tangent that is entirely lost on Tatsuya. Then, Jun bites his lip and flushes, but resolutely doesn't look away. "Let me read it to you someday."

Somehow, that declaration—the way he says it—strikes Tatsuya as bold and strangely intimate. Jun sees a shared _someda_ y in their future, sees days and weeks and months before them and evidently wants to stick by Tatsuya for all of them. Heat fills his cheeks, and Jun grins with tired eyes crinkling at the corners. "Okay," Tatsuya mumbles in reply, "okay."

And it could end there and it would be enough—but they're sitting close enough to feel their body heat intermingling between them, to hear each other's breaths, and then suddenly, Jun is on his knees and his hand is on Tatsuya's cheek. His touch is tender and soft, and his palm reeks of sweaty lotion and dirt. "I promise," Jun exhales, close enough for Tatsuya to feel every syllable against his skin and, oh, right, they were talking about reading, weren't they?

Jun then kisses him, and it's feather-light and lasts a mere second. It's enough to knock the air out of Tatsuya's lungs, though, and it makes him lose his balance on the edge of the bed. He almost tumbles down but ends up on his knees instead, only a hair's breadth away from Jun. And Jun—Jun laughs, like wind chimes in the summer, and kisses him again.

* * *

 **a/n: so yes, i'm back and i'm glad to _be_ back. thanks for being patient with me. this is one chapter short of wrapping up, now, and i hope i can manage to finish this before my break is over. so long!**


	8. Chapter 8

The furniture looks expensive and sleek, and yet it's all covered by a thin sheen of dust. It's grey and lifeless, save for the flowers all over the windowsills. Jun stirs his steaming instant-ramen with a look of shame. "I'm sorry I can't offer you anything better," he mumbles into the cup, foggy tendrils obscuring his face like a veil.

Tatsuya knows that, no matter how many times he tells him that cup noodles are as good a meal as any, Jun won't listen. So he says nothing and instead slurps too hot ramen while sinking back into the black leather couch that is all design and no comfort. It feels so different from the worn and torn couch they have at home, Tatsuya thinks, where everyone has an assigned seat for all the evenings they'd sit together in endless, uncomfortable silence.

And it's startling how _silent_ a lack of warmth can feel. If Tatsuya listens, he can hear water moving through the pipes of the apartment complex. He hears people talking in the streets and the steady noise of motors thrumming, a cat's meows and Jun's chopsticks clicking. And yet, this place is as cold as his own home, with nothing but noisy silence to fill the emptiness.

The stale air reeks of fertiliser and the flavour enhancer in their cheap soup, and Jun looks miserable while taking dainty sips of leftover instant-broth. Tatsuya places his almost empty cup on the coffee table, wiping away some dust with his hand. Jun's tired eyes trace the movement and he sighs, the breath rattling in his ribcage like dead leaves.

"It's quiet, isn't it," he says without inflection, expression disdainful. He sets his not-quite-as-empty bowl down as well. "It's always been, I think."

The bitterness is not all that surprising. Tatsuya understands the sentiment only too well, for the silence that stems from having nothing to say is trapped inside the apartment's walls even now. It's suffocating and all-encompassing, commanding reverent abidance, treating words as sacrilege.

How Jun manages to stand it, Tatsuya can only wonder. It may have to do with the dust on top of the piano in the room being smudged by fingerprints, or the small kitchen radio being oddly pristine, or all the nights they've been filling with talking and meandering about, but none of that speaks of history, of a _before_.

There are no family photos anywhere, as far as Tatsuya can tell—no picture frames overflowing with plastic smiles and fake pride, nothing to mark the point at which everything began to come apart, no immortalised, catastrophic fallout trapped behind a thin glass pane and a gaudy decorative frame. There are no memories worth holding onto inside these walls, not even the kind that's left to do nothing but collect dust alongside everything else.

"It isn't lonely, though," Tatsuya eventually says, and it would seem like an awfully cheap lie if he didn't put all his conviction behind his words. His knuckles whiten below his skin, and he looks up to meet Jun's eyes, willing himself to remain resolute amidst all this sadness.

Jun exhales and his lips twitch into a reflexive facsimile of a smile. "Maybe," he replies, and stands up. He gathers the ramen cups up, stacks them together, and proceeds to stare at Tatsuya as though he wants to add something. His fingers trace the rim of the bottom cup all the while. "I'm glad you're here," Jun eventually says, looking oddly close to tears.

Tatsuya follows him into the kitchen, then, and watches in silence as Jun rinses the noodle bowls and leaves them to dry. Once he's done, he washes his hands and dries them off, with his every movement looking more robotic than the last.

"I just remembered something," he says while needlessly straightening out kinks in the towel. "Could you wait in the living room for me?"

Naturally, Tatsuya obliges and watches as Jun disappears down a small hallway with motes of dust billowing about in his wake. A door slams into a wall, Jun mumbles to himself, hardcover books scrape and the knocks of them being set back down echo hollowly. Then, a little noise of triumph and the door being slammed back shut, the hinges rattling ominously.

Jun's socked feet patter across the floor and he returns with a smile and a children's novel held proudly in his hands. It's a paperback with a dog eared cover, the reinforced carton disintegrating into several layers at the stained and dirtied bottom. "I promised I'd read it to you," he tells Tatsuya as he sits down next to him, shoulder to shoulder. His spindly fingers splay across the cover, drawing attention to it.

The title reads in English—"The Little Prince," it says. A yellow-haired boy on an asteroid stares back at Tatsuya with a hollow, somewhat crudely drawn gaze. "It's in English," he states, though it's more of a question, and meets Jun's much warmer eyes.

"That, it is," he affirms and flips open the cover in the opposite direction of what they're both familiar with. His roughed fingertips smooth over first page. "I owned it in Japanese when I was little, but I have no idea where it went," Jun goes on, staring at the words without reading a single one. "This belonged to my father." His tone is reverent, grieving and sour all at once, in equal parts; his face doesn't reflect any of that.

Tatsuya reaches out to thumb at the corner of the well-loved pages. He lets them snap by his fingers like a flipbook, albeit much more slowly, until he finds the interval between two pages to be off. "There's something between the pages there," he says.

Jun hums a small, curious noise and opens the book where Tatsuya indicates. What greets them isn't a bookmark—or perhaps it is, after a makeshift fashion—but instead of thick paper and a silky tassel, it's a photograph with its ink reddening in the face of time.

A much younger Jun—younger even than Tatsuya had ever known him—is sat next to his father with a bright grin and chafed knees. Behind them, a more youthful Kurosu Junko has a hand placed on her son's and her husband's shoulders, each. Their smiles appear honest enough to mock everything that would become of them.

On that unspecified, sunny day in some unspecified, sunny park, they are still happy.

Jun exhales shakily and picks up the photograph. "My mother didn't keep photos around," he says and turns it over in his hands, examining the back. Nothing is written there, save for the print company's logo, and Jun sets it down onto the open page with a sigh. "Not like I could remember anything from back then."

There's nothing he can say to that, Tatsuya realises; it comes with a tired sort of resignation. He rests his hand atop Jun's in lieu of speaking, his eyes raking across the page not covered by their hands. " _'_ _You—you alone will have the stars as no one else has them... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night... You—only you—will have stars that can laugh_ ,'" he reads aloud to the best of his ability, the foreign words just a tad bit clunky on his tongue.

"Your English is good," Jun says softly and turns his hand over to squeeze Tatsuya's. The photograph slides off the book, but neither of them moves to pick it up. "I wonder if he had this page marked on purpose—if it means something."

It could have announced the end of the world more than ten years ago with a trio of plastic smiles as its herald, and they would be none the wiser, Tatsuya thinks.

They sit in silence after that, until Jun disentangles his fingers from Tatsuya's. He bends forward to retrieve the photograph from off the ground. "May I borrow your lighter?" he asks, palm extended, and Tatsuya hesitates. Jun's unseeing expression from the last time he'd held it flashes in his mind, and his fingers subconsciously tighten around the lighter still in his pocket. "Please," Jun presses, voice going frail around the edges where his eyes harden with resolve, "I need to do this."

Tatsuya exhales heavily through his nose, but ultimately relents. Jun accepts the lighter with a whispered word of thanks or two, before snapping the cap back with a deeply familiar clinking noise. The flame sputters to life and Jun, ever unceremoniously, brings it to the bottommost corner of the photograph until the paper catches fire.

He tosses it onto the glass-pane of the coffee table, then, and in silence, he watches the ghosts trapped inside the picture get devoured by the slowly encroaching flame. Motes of dust reflect the fire as they drift along, glowing like fireflies. The smell of burnt chemicals—the ink and glossy coating, Tatsuya supposes—curls into the air alongside pale tendrils of smoke.

It's oddly reminiscent of incense, burnt on an altar to finally deliver rest unto restless ghosts.

Jun stares on silently, even after ash is all that is left. Tatsuya briefly wonders if he's going to cry, but then Jun is suddenly laughing. It's shrill and high, his body convulsing with the laughter bursting past his manic grin. Tatsuya stares at him, frozen if only because he has no idea how to react, and watches as tears begin to run down Jun's cheeks as he keeps and keeps on laughing.

Eventually, though, he calms down again, with his eyes red-rimmed and puffy and chest rising and falling too quickly. He looks at Tatsuya then, wipes his face with his hands, and attempts a wobbly smile. "She never kept photographs around," he breathes, his voice hoarse from laughing, "and just now, I felt like I knew why."

He seems freer somehow, in spite of all the hurt and sadness and bitterness evident on his face, Tatsuya thinks. He has half a mind to press him, to simply talk to him about it. Not now, however— now, he simply accepts that Jun's shoulders aren't as tense, and that some of the ghosts haunting his gaze have been washed away by tears.

Wordlessly, he gathers Jun into his arms. "That's okay," he says softly once Jun relaxes and thin arms come to hug him back.

"We'll be okay," he assures, and the words taste of burnt plastic.


	9. Chapter 9

Jun's eyes are searching— _imploring_ —in a way that Tatsuya isn't familiar with.

But then, this isn't Jun. Or rather, not quite—not the one that Tatsuya had loved just before his world had ended; not the one he hadn't been able to let go of; not the one that had forgotten how trusting and being trusted felt like, only to relearn it all over again.

 _This_ Jun might have a chance at happiness yet; it just so happens that Tatsuya himself shouldn't, couldn't and _mustn't_ be part of it.

Jun's eyes are searching as if he were attempting to place a passing stranger's face.

Tatsuya is loath to meet them.

* * *

 **a/n: thus concludes this fanfic, i guess! it's way more popular over on ao3, but i'm still grateful to all of you readers on here who hopefully enjoyed this!**


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